from India Insight:

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Jim O’Neill, who coined the term BRICs to highlight emerging economic powerhouses Brazil, Russia, India and China, said India’s budget lacked a “wow” factor but was good enough to push the country on a path of 8 percent growth or more “for a long time”.

Many emerging economies have been banking on weaker currencies to revitalise economic growth. Oil's 25 percent fall in dollar terms this year should also help. The problem however is the dollar's strength which is leading to a general tightening of monetary conditions worldwide, more so in countries where central banks are intervening to prevent their currencies from falling too much.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama were reportedly engaged in a heated telephone conversation last Thursday when Putin noted in passing that an aircraft had gone down in Ukraine. The tragic crash of the Malaysian airliner in rebel-held eastern Ukraine continues to dominate the headlines, but it is important to remember what agitated Putin and prompted the phone call in the first place -- sanctions.

The new EU aristocracy will be put in place this week with the European Parliament to confirm Jean-Claude Juncker as the next European Commission President today and then EU leaders gathering for a summit on Wednesday at which they will work out who gets the other top jobs in Brussels.

Emerging stocks, in the doghouse for months and months, haven't done too badly of late. The main EM index, has rallied more than 11 percent since its end-August troughs, outgunning the S&P 500's 3 percent rise in this period. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch strategist Michael Hartnett reminds us of the extreme underweight positioning in emerging stocks last month, as revealed by his bank's monthly investor survey. Anyone putting on a long EM-short UK equities trade back then would have been in the money with returns of 540 basis points, he says.

The Fed's unexpectedly dovish position last week has sparked a rally in emerging markets -- not only did the U.S. central bank's all-powerful boss Ben Bernanke keep his $85 billion-a-month money printing programme in place, he also mentioned emerging markets in his post-meeting news conference, noting the potential impact of Fed policy on the developing world. All that, along with the likelihood of the dovish Janet Yellen succeeding Bernanke was described by Commerzbank analysts as "a triple whammy for EM." A positive triple whammy, presumably.

Emerging stocks are not much in favour these days -- Bank of America/Merrill Lynch's survey of global fund managers finds that in August just a net 18 percent of investors were overweight emerging markets, among the lowest since 2001. Within the sector though, there are some outright winners and quite a few losers. Russian stocks are back in favour, the survey found, with a whopping 92 percent of fund managers overweight. Allocations to Russia doubled from last month (possibly at the expense of South African where underweight positions are now at 100 percent, making it the most unloved market of all) See below for graphic:

What will save the Indian rupee? There's an election next year so forget about the stuff that's really needed -- structural reforms to labour and tax laws, easing business regulations and scrapping inefficient subsidies. The quickest and most effective short-term option may be a dollar bond issued to the Indian diaspora overseas which could boost central bank coffers about $20 billion.